How To Stop Autoplay Videos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Other Sites

With videos becoming an extensive part of our web browsing, it’s no surprise that all the social networks are making sure you don’t miss out on any videos. While we appreciate the new video-centric features of social networks, we most certainly do not appreciate the auto playing videos. All major social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram have videos set to autoplay.

It is annoying to say the least, considering there are times when we are just casually browsing on our favorite social network and all of a sudden a video starts playing. It is even more annoying when webpages play videos automatically and we scramble around searching where is the sound coming from. The autoplay videos also make sure that our limited mobile data bandwidth gets sucked in pre-loading those videos. The autoplay videos are especially a hassle when we are browsing at work, classes or at places where silence is a priority. The good news is there are ways to stop autoplay videos. Here’s how you can do it:

How to stop autoplay videos on Instagram

Unlike Facebook, Instagram doesn’t let you stop autoplay videos but you can control it while you are using mobile data. Here’s how to do it:

Instagram Android App

1. Open Instagram on your Android smartphone or tablet. Go to your Profile, which is the last tab below and tap the three-dot button on upper right corner.

2. Scroll down and go to “Cellular Data Use“. Select “Use Less Data“, which will stop pre-loading videos in the app while using cellular data.

Instagram iOS App

1. Open Instagram app on your iPhone or iPad. Go to your Profile, which is the last tab below and tap the Settings icon on upper right corner.

2. Scroll down and go to “Mobile Data Use“. Turn on “Use Less Data“, which will stop pre-loading videos in the app while using cellular data.

How to stop autoplay videos on Twitter

Twitter lets you disable autoplay videos natively. Here’s how you can do it:

Twitter Web

1. Open Twitter on your browser and login to your account. Click on your profile and go to “Settings“.

2. Scroll below to the “Content” header and untick the option of “Video Autoplay” in Video Tweets.

Twitter Android App

1. Open Twitter app on your Android smartphone or tablet. Tap the three-dot button on the top right corner and go to “Settings“.

2. Then, go to “General” settings.

3. Scroll below and tap “Video autoplay” and select “Do not automatically play video in timelines“.

Twitter iOS App

1. Open Twitter app on iPhone or iPad. Click on your profile and go to “Settings“.

2. Go to “Video autoplay”.

3. Select “Use WiFi only” or “Never play videos automatically“.

How to stop autoplay videos on YouTube

YouTube recently introduced an autoplay feature on its web platform. Disabling it is pretty simple though and here’s how to do it:

1. Open YouTube’s webpage in your browser and play any random video.

2. You will see an autoplay button turned on on the upper right corner. Just turn it off.

How to stop autoplay videos on various websites and blogs

Autoplay videos on webpages can be disabled by fiddling through various browser settings. The autoplay videos can be disabled by changing flash settings since most videos run on Shockwave Flash. We can change flash settings to make sure that these videos are only played when we want them to. So, here’s how to disable autoplay videos in Chrome and Firefox.

Chrome

1. Click the hamburger menu on the top right in Chrome and go to “Settings“.

2. Scroll below and click “show advanced settings“.

3. Click “Content Settings” under “Privacy“.

4. Scroll down to find “Plugins” and select “Let me choose when to run plugin content“.

5. Once you are done, you will see a box instead of autoplaying videos on websites. You can then choose to play it by clicking it.

Firefox

1. Go to the address bar in Firefox and type “about:addons“.

2. Click on “Plugins” in the left pane.

3. Locate “Shockwave Flash” in the plugin list.

4. Select “Ask to activate” in the menu on the right.

5. Once done, all the autoplay videos on website will turn into a box and Firefox will ask your permission to block it or play it.

Note: You can also use a third party add-on/extension such as Flash Control for Firefox, which makes sure no videos (Flash or HTML 5) autoplay in the browser.

Sadly, there’s no way yet to stop autoplay videos on Microsoft Edge and the browser lacks extensions support, so there’s no way at all. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this in the future, considering Internet Explorer has the ability disable autoplay videos by disabling the flash plugin.

Don’t get annoyed by Autoplay Videos anymore

These are the ways to stop autoplay videos and this should give you a lot of relief, as we are aware of the nuisance and unwanted data usage caused by videos autoplaying. As you must have already noticed, stopping autoplay videos on various apps and browsers is pretty easy. So, try them out and do let us know if you have any questions regarding the same. You can surely expect to hear back from us.

Rupesh is a section editor here and one of the hosts at our YouTube channel. A long time mobile lover and technology aficionado, he loves to indulge in all things technology! In his free time (which is non-existent), he loves watching Westworld, Silicon Valley, and Game of Thrones, obviously.